sixty-two thousand dollars. "Qyite
frankly," Adkins told the investigator, "I
feel the man set the fire."
The Ohio state fire marshal never de-
termined the cause of the fire and no one
was ever charged with a crime. Accord-
ing to Issa, St. Paul paid Qyantum
twenty-five thousand dollars, but refused
to pay his claim for the Steal Stopper in-
ventory. Issa sued St. Paul for a hundred
and seventy-five thousand dollars, and
the two parties eventually setded out of
court for about twenty thousand dollars.
The insurance company, meanwhile,
had found something peculiar about Issa,
unrelated to the arson: there was no indi-
cation of where his initial capital came
from. After interviewing a family mem-
ber, an investigator reported, "She was
unable to advise us as to his financial
banking [sic] to become an officer in
Qyantum Inc." A second report noted,
'We were unable to find the source of his
financing for the business ventures he is
engaged in at the present time."
I n 2000, two years after losing the
Senate primary campaign, Issa easily
won a congressional seat in a conserva-
tive district near San Diego, where vot-
ers seemed unconcerned about the then
two-decade-old tales from his youth. In
2003, Issa, who was now worth more
than a hundred million dollars, funded
the recall of the state's governor, Gray
Davis. It was an ambitious project. Davis,
who had been elected to a second term
six months earlier, had not committed an
impeachable offense; he simply had be-
come unpopular. Issa planned to run for
governor and replace Davis, but once
again reporters started to look into his
past. They took particular interest in the
story of his brother stealing his car, and
again questioned Issà s truthfulness. For
example, the Los Angeles Times reported
that Issa did not win Inc.' s national En-
trepreneur of the Year award, as he had
suggested. He won a regional prize in
San Diego and became one of a few hun-
dred nominees for the national award.
Issa said that he hadn't meant to indicate
otherwise.
On August 7, 2003, Issa visited the
office of the San Diego County registrar
of voters, where he was expected to file
the paperwork for a gubernatorial cam-
paign. Facing a scrum of cameras, he an-
nounced that he wasn't running. Instead,
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he tearfully explained, he had decided to
devote his life to finding peace in the
Middle East. Because of his Lebanese
roots, he had always cared about the
issue; now he intended to make it his
life's work. "It's my desire to see that the
recall continues, that Gray Davis is re-
called, and that California has a brighter
day," he said. But he also wanted to see
"Israel and a Palestinian people living
side by side in peace. I won't choose be-
tween the two." After mocking him for
the melodrama, the California press
corps moved on to cover Arnold Schwar-
zenegger's campaign, and Issa spent a
few quiet years as a congressional back-
bencher engaged in Middle East issues.
He travelled several times to Syria to
meet with President Bashar Assad at a
time when the Bush Administration was
treating the country as the fourth mem-
ber of the Axis of Evil. He was the only
member of Congress to visit Lebanon
during the 2006 war with Israel.
On most domestic issues, Issa has
been a reliable conservative vote, but he
has often found himself at odds with Re-
publicans over foreign policy. His pro-
Arab and pro-engagement positions on
Middle East politics led a domestic ter-
rorist group, the Jewish Defense League,
to target Issa in December, 2001. A
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whisde-blower in the group foiled a plot
to blow up a mosque and Issà s Califor-
nia office.
Issa has abandoned his longtime
dream of holding a statewide position.
"The moment that happened was the
day after the election and watching Meg
Whitman," Neugebauer, Issàs chief of
staff, told me. In a year of Republican
victories across the country, Whitman
spent a hundred and forty million dollars
of her own money, and still lost the race
for governor of California by thirteen
points. With the U.S. Senate and the
California governorship out of reach, Issa
will have to channel his ambitions to-
ward the House leadership. He is in an
ideal position to do so. With the White
House and the Senate still under Demo-
cratic control, the new Republican
House has litde hope of passing its legis-
lative agenda. Its real power will come
from the ability to investigate Obama
and feed a press corps that thrives on par-
tisan combat.
I ssa has set up what his aides call Issa
Enterprises, a higWy organized effort
to manage his image. Kurt Bardella, the
spokesman, who is twenty-seven, and
whom Issa calls "my secret weapon,"
fiercely screens all interviews. Bardella
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